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Individual voice recognition and an auditory map of neighbours in free-ranging black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra)

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An Erratum to this article was published on 07 April 2015

Abstract

Recognizing individuals auditorily is of primal importance in maintaining socio-spatial cohesion among conspecifics within a social group as well as for regulating space use among neighbours, particularly for species dwelling in forests where visual communication is constrained. This study evaluates the capacity of black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra) in the Palenque National Park, Mexico, to recognize the voices of individual neighbours, using a violation-of-expectation paradigm based on the spatial congruence of voices. First, we assessed intra- vs inter-individual acoustic variations by comparing the acoustic structures of the loud calls of six adult males from three different social groups. Although the acoustic structures of barks were more individually discriminative than those of roars, both loud call types presented significant individual variations. Second, playbacks of sequences composed of barks and roars were studied in order to assess the auditory recognition capacity of six neighbouring groups. Two test situations were presented to each study group: the spatial location of the speaker was either congruent (in the appropriate neighbouring territory) or incongruent (in a territory on the opposite side) with the voice broadcast. Monkeys reacted significantly more (e.g. faster approach, more vocal responses) in incongruent situations. Our data suggest that black howler monkeys display individual acoustic variations and are capable of recognizing the voices of non-group members. Our experimental paradigm is an easily replicable way to investigate inter-group voice recognition in animals and to test the extent of socio-spatial cognitive abilities.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the Mexican government (CONANP) for the authorization to carry out our research at the Palenque National Park. Our research was supported by grants from CONACyT, the graduate program in biological sciences (UNAM), CNRS (PICS program), ANR, IUF and IDEA WILD. We are grateful to The Institute of Biology (UNAM) and Animal and Human Ethology Laboratory (University of Rennes 1) staff members for logistic support. We thank Eloise Chailleux, Cindy Maslarova and Oskar Persson for their assistance in the field. We are grateful to Dr. Sarie Van Belle for her helpful comments and for her assistance with the identification of monkeys. We are also grateful to Ernesto Estivill and to Veronique Biquand for their assistance in acoustic and statistic and to Ann Cloarec and Anne-Marie Cervera for correcting our English. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This article is a partial requirement for the doctoral degree in biological sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) by MBJ.

Ethical standards

Experiments comply with the current laws of Mexico.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Coyoacán, 04510, México City, Mexico

    Margarita Briseño-Jaramillo

  2. Estación de Biología Tropical Los Tuxtlas, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Veracruz, Mexico

    Alejandro Estrada

  3. Ethologie Animale et Humaine, U.M.R. 6552-C.N.R.S., Université de Rennes 1, Station Biologique, 35380, Paimpont, France

    Alban Lemasson

  4. Institut Universitaire de France, Maison des Universités, 103, Boulevard Saint-Michel, 75005, Paris, France

    Alban Lemasson

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  1. Margarita Briseño-Jaramillo
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  2. Alejandro Estrada
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Correspondence to Margarita Briseño-Jaramillo.

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Briseño-Jaramillo, M., Estrada, A. & Lemasson, A. Individual voice recognition and an auditory map of neighbours in free-ranging black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 69, 13–25 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1813-9

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